REIL: a home-energy brand taken onto the show floor twice

Client: Retrofit Energy Ireland, via Outwork Media · My role: brand identity, stand graphics, print, merch and web, as Creative Director at Outwork Media · Shows: PTSB Ideal Home Show, Dublin, April and October 2025

Retrofit Energy Ireland helps homeowners upgrade their homes and claim SEAI grants, all through one company. It came to Outwork Media with a logo built around a sunburst, eight different home upgrades to sell, and a government grant most people have never heard of. Then two shows, a few days each.

The stand had to say what REIL does before anyone slowed down, get them to the desk, and send them home with something to keep. I designed the brand from the start, and I was at the show.

A roof drawn over the letters, with solar panels on it. The panels break off into a pattern of tiles that runs through everything else. Navy for trust, teal for the energy side, Archivo for the words. Nothing the brand couldn't carry onto a hi-vis vest or a five-metre wall.

One line on the big wall. The April stand's main wall carries a single promise, "Upgrade your home with SEAI One Stop Shop Grants", set big enough to read from the aisle. The services and the detail sit closer in, on the panels and the counter.

Draw it at printed size. Every panel was laid out at the size it would be printed, from the 986 mm squares to the counter fronts, with a person drawn in for scale, before anything went to the builder.

Show the house, not the list. In October the stand was one five-metre wall. On a flyer, eight services are a list. On that wall they became a house, each service pinned to the part of the home it fixes, so a visitor could find their own problem from across the aisle.

Business cards, a brochure that walks through the retrofit journey, a show competition card (one lead per entry), pens, team polos and jackets, a grants leaflet and outdoor signage. I also designed and built REIL's website in the same system: a dusk photograph, one promise, one button.

"A brand has to hold at three metres, not just at 375 pixels."